Onlythe Bolsheviks have protested against the exaggeration
of this Bolshevik idea. When the newspaper Novy
Dyen{2} struck a false note by demarcation inadequate in principle
from the Trudoviks and Popular Socialists, three Bolshevik writers made an
attempt to correct this obliteration of differences in programme and to put
agitation in the newspaper and at election meetings on more consistent
class, socialist lines. This attempt failed, as far as we know,
through no fault of the Bolsheviks. Equally unsuccessful was the
attempt of a certain Bolshevik to protest against Jordansky’s arguments in
Novy Dyen concerning Social-Democratic views on law and
order. Jordansky, like many opportunists, vulgarised Engels’s well-known
statement about the “rosy cheeks” that the Social-Democratic movement had
acquired on the basis of “legality”. Engels himself strongly protested
against a loose interpretation of his idea (see his letters in Neue
Zeit), which applied to a definite period of development in Germany
(with universal suffrage,
etc.).{3} Jordansky thinks it is in place to speak of such a thing under
the “legality” of June 3.

Notes

{1}
The article “The St. Petersburg Election” is devoted to the
results of the by-election to the Third Duma held in September 1909; it was
printed unsigned in Proletary No. 49, October 3 (16), 1909.

Thenote written by Lenin was directed against N. Jordansky’s
opportunist article, “No Way Out”, published in Novy Dyen,
No. 6.

{2}Novy Dyen (New Day)—a legal Social-Democratic
weekly newspaper, published in St. Petersburg from July 20 (August 2) to
December 13 (26), 1909; 15 issues appeared. The newspaper was ’closed down
by the police. Two articles by Lenin were printed in Novy Dyen:
“Once More on Partyism and Non-Partyism” and “Concerning
Vekhi” (see pp. 62–64, 123–31 of this volume).

{3}
This refers to F. Engels’s “Introduction” to Marx’s work The
Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850. When the “Introduction” was
published by the German Social-Democrats in 1895 it was distorted and
subsequently interpreted by them as a renunciation of an armed uprising and
barricade fighting.

Thecomplete text of the “Introduction” was published for the first
time in the U.S.S.R. alone. (Marx and Engels, Selected Works,
Vol. I, Moscow, 1958, pp. 118–38)